Have you actually tried that? That command looks like what you want, but in my experiments it processed the ENTIRE video asset, when all I wanted was the first two minutes. Fail.
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karlgrzFeb 17 '11 at 18:02

Yes I've used the command successfully. It's important to specify the duration keyword and a colon prior to the duration, otherwise it won't work.
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Stefan SchmidtFeb 23 '11 at 6:37

GREAT point! Thanks for the follow up! I'm still going with FFmpeg, as I'm more comfortable with it and use it a lot.
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karlgrzMar 2 '11 at 15:17

This used to work for me, but now I was encoding a file where the --stop-at parameter was ignored (i.e. no matter what I set it to, HandBrakeCLI would always encode the entire remaining file), while the --start-at parameter was respected. Any clues?
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kynanSep 17 '11 at 8:21

Note that --stop-at duration:120 means encode 120 seconds and will not stop at 120 sec into the video when combined with --start-at and a duration > 0. This is a little counter-intuitive and is what confused me there.
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kynanSep 17 '11 at 8:30